Chances are that you heard about it before, as months of planning superceded it. In this autumn i am holding an event that hopefully will become a tradition for the upcoming years. Local Wesnoth communities, isolated from the denizens of the official server are still going strong despite the dwindling of official forum activities. Four countries full of legends, but with tales unheard. This tournament will be the the place and time for them to earn the respect they deserve.

1. General

The 2016 IWT is the first of a possibly annual grand tournament series, where players of four countries fight along for the glory of their homeland. This tournament is held exclusively for Hungary, Poland, Russia and Italy, but later years - in case of interest - others can nominate too. The format is default era 1v1, and the maps are provided by the Sandbox Map Picker add-on. The matches will be played on the official server.
Each nominating country must perform the following tasks to be eligible to enter:

Every country must have a team captain in order to make organisation easier.
Team captains have the responsibility to inform the whole community on their forum page about the tournament and the rules.
Team captains assemble a team of 9 national players, and enlist a maximum of 5 substitutes in any way they find fitting (this means they have a guaranteed place). The suggested method is to provide a reserved slot for the obviously best players in the community, and to decide the remaining slots with a mini-tournament, but it is really up to the TC.
All team members have to have the nationality of their country. Foreigners who speak the language of the country well, but lack the nationality can still partake as substitute players.
All team members must be registered on the official forum! This is mandatory to make communication with your future opponent easier.
If there are players who do not speak a common language with the opponent, the TC have to act as a spokesperson and help with arranging the time of the game for him/her, if needed.

2. Time of the event

The tournament starts on 19th September and if all goes as planned, ends on 30th October.

3. Tournament system

Team rosters are finalised on the first day of the tournament.
In each round, countries are paired and their players are matched randomly. A country wins the round when the majority of their players won against the other country. Each country has 9 players (plus substitutes) to avoid draws. For the same reason, offering a draw is not allowed. The tournament will consist of 6 rounds. There is no elimination and every main player will have the chance to play 6 games.
Maps have to be randomised and cannot be rerolled (unless it is a mirror of course), but upon mutual agreement it can be chosen from the mappool. Faction and leader can be picked if you have not seen the opponent's choice yet.
The country with the most won rounds wins the tournament. In case of equality, the number of individual victories against the other country is the decisive factor, and when that is also equal, the total individual victories will be compared. If all above fails, the countries can nominate a champion to fight one last duel against the other country.

(Surely some ancients classics are missing from here, but the point of using this pack is to bring a bit of freshness into competition by focusing on the newer maps.)

6. Game validation

Upon victory, the replay have to be uploaded to the tournament thread to make it count. This can be done by anyone, including the observers. (While it is the responsibility of the winner to have a replay of the match, the losing side is encouraged to sometimes report the game some time instead, to keep those observers who download the match in uncertainity about the outcome!)
The organisers (me) will check every replay anyway, but announcing the winner in spoilers can help in this work.

7. Cheat and other abuses

Cheating is not allowed, and cheating players will be banned instantly from the tournament. Flooding, giving hints are also strictly forbidden and may result in a quick ban. Verbal insults come with warning and yellow card first, but if the player is keep behaving unacceptable, may be banned, too. Playing as a foreigner in the main roster is also bannable. The round where a ban takes place is automatically lost for that country. Since the team leaders are responsible for the players they recruit, we have high hopes that such a scandalous act never happens!

If one side has technical problems, it has a right to postpone the game and to continue it after fixing the problem, but the side that asks to postpone has to contact the opponents as soon as possible and make an appointment to continue the game in the remaining days of the round. Opponents are meant to find a time to continue the game during this period of time. After this period, if postponing player won't contact the opponents, it will automatically lose the game. It's lex specialis to the rule below:
Both sides can continue the match another day if all players will agree to do that.

If a player vanishes without a word and is not present in two consecutive matches, he/she is disqualified. Onward from that, a substitute has to replace the absent player permanently (it does not count into the subbing limit, but the substitute cannot sub others from that point).

Rules are never perfect, thus bona fides (good will) should be visible in players' behaviour, if the players will find some part of the rules not precise , malignant behaviour will be punished by official warning. If the players will still act in malignant way, it can be banned.

8. Scheluding matches

The best way to arrange matches is to be online a lot and to join the tournament games, where you can meet the others. It is strongly recommended to make a public post in advance containing the times when you are able to play if your freetime is limited. If you do not have time at all, inform both your opponent and your team captain as soon as possible to make the subbing a smooth process. Always announce the time and date if you arranged it somewhere outside the forum thread - observers will appreciate it!
If the players could not play their match during the week of the round, they and their team captain will be contacted. Matches can be postponed by further seven days, but the missing player have to respond in 24 hours (or have to inform us in advance), else he/she is out for that round and will be substituted, or a loss is booked against that opponent. If the match is unfinished upon deadline, the organisers decide the winner with all circumstances considered. Keep in mind that the player who was more active at the scheluding has a very good chance at coming out as the winner in such situations.

9. Substituting

When someone cannot play the round, a substitute can be requested by the team captain. The limit is 5 players in reserve, and all of them can sub only 3 times during the entire tournament (to prevent an exploit where some of the best players are enlisted as the subs). There is no upper limit for substituting per round, but if all the 15 swaps have been used and another sub would be necessary, then it is a loss against that opponent.
Teams which were unable to gather 5 substitutes have slightly different rules applied for them. I try to make these rules so that they do not make having less players advantageous, but does not put communites with less players into a serious disadvantage either.

10. Ethics

Consider time restrictions before signing up - getting the players to play at the same time isnt always easy, especially if some of them have really limited time options.
Be active while setting the game date - from past experience we know its always important to set the date as soon as possible to have a reserve in case of some unexpected situation.
Be tolerant to one another, to the organisers, respect the rules and their decisions - not everything can be treated in the general rules, so in those cases, the organisers have the decisive word. We promise not to take sides.

11. Bugs

What to do if you encounter a bug?

Checksum error in replays: Likely caused by cyrillic fonts. To prevent it, it must be the original host who saves and loads the game.
Lua error, actual has a nil value: This is caused by MirrorMate. Luckily it does not have an effect on gameplay. You can download the file below and replace the file with the same name in the folder of the era. This is still in testing phrase, but it seems to work.

A player disconnects when SMP continued to the next scenario: This occurs rarely. However if you are one of the 0,1% who keeps crashing after every map randomisation, then do it once and reopen the specific map you got.
A player reports out of sync: Unknown reason. The units of the opponent will not appear in your game. No known solution for this, unfortunately you have to restart the match.

12. Add-ons

Here is our standpoint on certain popular add-ons which can be used in default 1v1:

"Founded in 2008, wesnoth.com.pl has gathered the biggest polish fanbase of The Battle for Wesnoth, and became the official polish website of this game. On our forums originated some of the most iconic UMC add-ons, the most known being Era of Magic, To Lands Unknown, and a work of ours community's collaboration - a historical era called Eastern Europe at War. Up to date, we made over 20 multiplayer eras, organized close to 15 tournaments, and wrote countless articles - including multiplayer guides, WML and pixel-art tutorials, YouTube gameplays, interviews with known creators and players, and even Wesnothian poetry.
Back in the days, our multiplayer community was very solid - and although the majority of our players retired, we still claim spots on the ladder's top 10, and are ready to fight for the glory of our homeland."

Russian-speaking website named WesnothLife.ru was founded by Renom, True and Antares in 2008 and unites not only CIS players but also players from different foreign countries. From the Foundation the site hosts various tournaments. Right now 22th Semi-annual Regular Cup with more than 25 players and Double Elimination brackets is closing to its finals.
WesnothLife tournaments evolved from simple 8-players cups to broad choice of Regular Leagues and Cups, especially we can distinguish Fast Cups, where all games have been played within same 1-2 days, Cups with predefined leaders and 2vs2 Cups was also organized.
Some guest players like Rigor, Dauntless and Jeronimo joined our Cups.
Total amount of tournaments is 22. Average number of players is 20+. The most popular tournament was SC2TV Open with 64 players. Average number of games is 80+. A tournament with the most games was 2nd WesnothLife League with 190 games.
There is special map pack add-on with a broad spectre of them from well-balanced standard to fully original maps. There are detailed statistics of games and players including ELO ladder.
Some Cups like 1st and 2nd Fast Cup and Winter Cup 2016 were streamed by Russian streamers.
Nowadays WesnothLife.ru has fully-fledged Website with forum, Wiki and a group in Russian social network. Moreover WesnothLife.ru is a complete platform for hosting tournaments with an ELO rating and brackets system.
Our little community is always welcome for newcomers either beginners, experienced players and hard-smoked veterans.

The International Wesnoth Tournament is now open! You can start playing your matches from this moment, for which you have one week.
Do not forget to announce the matches in advance if you know the time for it!
Always put the tournament name in the game title! (IWT 2016)Sadly i got news from Ammazzalepri; he has to leave the country right on the first day on the tournament, so he cannot be present. The substitute player taking his place is yet unknown. Until his return, draghen takes the incredibly fashionable team captain hat, so turn to him in case of need.
EDIT: Ammazzalepri is staying!

Dwarves (Bao p1) vs Orcs (me p2) in Howling ghost: My pressure is immediately hard and i get every village in the south but the strong knalganian resistance makes the battle hard to end. GG and thanks to the warm audience

Reporting in after day 1, and i would like to make some extra announcements:

As the host, always check the settings for being correct!!!(The three exclamation marks are not an exaggeration.) Games played with incorrect settings (such as forgot the timer, wrong mappack) can be contested later by the non-hosting player if he/she wishes so. In that case, the match has to be replayed.

Accessibility is very important! I read in the chat of the first tournament match that someone is still not registered on the forum and can be contacted only by the team captains, which is not making their lifes easier. If making a contact during rounds between the opponents failed and it was because of not registering, then it may result in an automatic loss and no chance to extend it. Hopefully there will not be precedency for this either.

Finally something more lighthearted. There will a small contest for the tournament members for the honorary title of the Most Epic Match 2016. Participants can nominate any match played during the tournament. The ones with the most nominations will be judged by some big names of the industry. Details will be announced later. Meanwhile maintain a list of replays you considered EPIC, because it will be more convenient that way to give your votes.

I regret to inform you that i was unaware of the fact that Sandbox Map Picker is broken with the timer for unknown reasons. This was not always the case before. Currently it results in one player having a timer and the other does not.
I decided that we shall use Sandbox Map Picker only for the map randomisation. So you should host the match in SMP, see the result, and rehost the outcome map with timer. I admit that it is not very convenient and i apologise for it. On the upside, now it is possible to use the No Mirror add-on instead of MirrorMate, which is much more efficient at dealing with mirror matchups, since it was not compatible with Sandbox Map Picker. I update the original post accordingly.
Please spread this info to all players of your community!

Really? I was sure that one of the observer of my game said that he saw the timer working for my opponent, and I had the timer in function too. That's strange!

In anycases I'm asking myself, at the light of all this, if we truly need that timer. I don't want to open a long polemic while the tournament is already started, but I'm asking myself if we can't simply reach an agreement like gentlemen about selecting the timer mode on or off for every battle. Experience tell me that the most epic battle are the ones where every movement need a long calibration and thinking and the match result depends closely on the good thinking of the player. Not to mention a big map - late game case, where 6 minuts are not even eneugh to move all your unit. We are wesnothian players, we don't like frantic action!
Please consider it Horus!

Can we play without timer if both players agree? My main reason for this is that if I needed to go afk (go to the toilet for example) I would most likely instantly lose a turn and probably the entire match, I am really afraid of this, if you say that the only consequence of not having the "standard" settings is that your opponent may contest the match then I think I can go to an agreement with my opponent to not use the timer without any consequences.